General: Perennial herb; stems climbing or trailing, up to 2 m long, finely short-hairy to glabrous, angled and somewhat grooved.
Leaves: Alternate, pinnately compound; leaflets 12 to 24, linear to lance-elliptic, abruptly narrowed to a pointed tip, 1-3 cm long; tendrils well developed, branched, grasping; stipules entire to toothed, 7-15 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence an axillary, long-stalked, one-sided raceme of 20 to 70 densely packed, drooping, pea-like flowers, the racemes longer than the supporting stalks; corollas blue to reddish-purple, two-toned dark and pale, (8) 10-15 mm long; calyces 1/2 as long as the corollas, gradually rounded or slightly swollen at the base on the upper side, the tube 2-3 mm long, the upper pair of teeth short and triangular, the lower 3 much longer and narrower.
Fruits: Pods, 1.5-3 cm long, glabrous; seeds 4 to 8.
Mesic fields, clearings, thickets and open forests in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; frequent in S BC, infrequent northward mostly E of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, rare on the Queen Charlotte Islands; introduced from Eurasia.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)
